Page 40 - Historic Churches 2013

40 BCD Special Report on Historic Churches 20th annual edition CATHEDRALC O M M U N I C A T I O N S
built. Walker’s restoration of the screen and
loft not only entailed repair and speculative
reinstatement of missing components, it also
involved slightly lengthening both fittings
in order to take account of the new nave
being ten inches wider than the old one.
While the screenwork at Llananno as we
see it today is an amalgam of old and new,
enough of each of the structural and decorative
components had survived for Walker to
extrapolate with reason the appearance of
what had been lost. The changes witnessed
by the rood loft were more comprehensive
and dramatic than those witnessed by the
rood screen below. The work included an
apparent alteration to the pitch of the loft
coving and the addition of carved figures to
the loft front. If Walker’s drawing is to be
trusted, then the pitch of the loft coving was
made shallower when the screenwork was
restored, essentially by setting the bressumer
of the loft lower in relation to the head-beam
of the screen (The photo, above right, thus
shows less of the soffit). The traditional
pitch, accepting the curvature of the soffit,
would have been closer to 45 degrees.
In 1880, soon after completion of the
new church, the 25 canopied niches of the
loft parapet were filled with figures carved
by Gerald Boulton of Cheltenham. The set
comprises 12 patriarchs, kings and prophets
to the north, Christ in the centre, and the
12 apostles to the south. Although carved
figures seem the most likely candidates for
the original loft front (given the depth of the
canopies), it is not certain that such figures
were ever deployed here. It is possible that
the niches contained painted figures (as at
Strensham in Worcestershire). The planking
also lacks the peg-holes found, for example,
at Llanfilo in Breconshire (although this
may simply be because all of the backing
woodwork at Llananno was replaced by
Walker during the restoration). While we
generally figurative in nature, their various
plant-forms not only decorative but invested
with symbolism. Three distinct plant-forms
appear at Llananno: the vine (the wider of
the bressumer trails), the pomegranate (the
narrower of the bressumer trails) and the
water-plant (the rood-beam to the west and
the head-beam of the rood screen to the east).
The vine is the most common plant-form
in carved trails. Vines and grapes symbolise
the Eucharistic wine (the blood of Christ)
and Christ himself: ‘I am the vine, ye are
the branches’ (John 16:5). The pomegranate,
meanwhile, was used as a decorative motif
on the hem of holy vestments: a reference
to Exodus 28:33 (‘upon the hem of it thou
shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of
purple, and of scarlet’). However, for church
screenwork it has additional significance. It
was the badge of Katherine of Aragon, whose
ill-fated marriage to Prince Arthur in 1501
is commemorated on a number of screens
and lofts in Wales (including at Aberconwy,
erected by Arthur’s friend Sir Richard Pole).
The water-plant is particularly characteristic
of Newtown work. Frustratingly, however,
its symbolism remains obscure.
Each bressumer trail at Llananno issues
from the mouth of a wyvern (a dragon with
the wings and legs of a bird, and a tail in the
form of a serpent). Such dragons symbolise
evil generally and Satan specifically (for
example, in Revelation 12:9: ‘And the great
dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called
the Devil, and Satan’). The tail in the form
of a serpent also recalls the amphisbaena,
the fabled two-headed serpent of the
ancients able to move in either direction
and thus symbolising inconstancy.
Despite the success of Walker’s restoration
of the screenwork at Llananno, it is important
to acknowledge not only what endures here
but also what can no longer be seen. For while
there survives one of very few medieval rood
cannot know how any such figures might have
looked, the new figures admirably capture the
spirit of late-medieval gothic woodcarving,
and are quite at home on the loft front.
THE ‘NEWTOWN’ SCHOOL
The screenwork at Llananno is closely related to
that found in several other borderland churches,
a fact first comprehensively articulated by Fred
Crossley and Maurice Ridgway in a series of
papers published in Archaeologia Cambrensis
(the journal of the Cambrian Archaeological
Society) between 1943 and 1962. The pair
identified ten examples, ranging from Llananno
in the south up to Daresbury in Cheshire,
90 miles to the north – referring to the putative
workshop as the Newtown or Montgomeryshire
School (on the basis of its possible location).
Two examples in Montgomeryshire provide
the most compelling relatives to the work at
Llananno: the screen and loft at Llanwnnog and
the spectacular remains from Newtown (now in
Llanllwchaiarn church just outside Newtown).
All three share highly distinctive carved
decoration of spectacular quality, much of it
unusually arrayed. Firstly, there are the tracery
heads. In the vast majority of medieval rood
screens, the tracery heads are of uniform
design from bay to bay. However, at Llananno
and in other Newtown screens, the design
of the heads varies from bay to bay. This
restless pattern-making is carried up over the
loft coving above and comprises a treatment
of the rood loft found in no other Welsh or
English medieval screenwork. The carved
motifs found here are mostly non-figurative
and recognisably gothic, be they Decorated
or Perpendicular in origin. They include a
variety of cusped, foiled and geometric forms.
Arguably more compelling still are
the carved trails occupying each of the
principal beams of the screen and loft.
Such trails remain one of the wonders of
Welsh screenwork in particular, for they are
The east (chancel) side of the Llananno screen, showing a boldly carved leaf trail on the bressumer and a more
intricate trail on the head beam which Crossley and Ridgway described as ‘probably the finest rendering of the
water plant as a decorative motif in existence’
The larger trail on Llananno’s west side bressumer issues
from the mouth of a wyvern, a dragon with the wings
and legs of a bird, and a tail in the form of a serpent